Breakfast of Champions: 1/30

The Slumlord of South Minneapolis, Jonathan Kaminsky's feature this week, uses the power of the Web in a way that I wish more investigative projects would. Many of the facts in the story can be corroborated by supporting legal documents, and within the story you can find links to image files that verify important facts.

Also, we created an interactive map of properties owned by the story's subject, Spiros Zorbalas.

[Radio Rey owner Guadalupe "Don Lupe"] Gonzalez also charged that during their confrontation in his office, [Alberto] Monserrate, [owner of Latino Communications Network] "got inches away from my face" and said he "was going to start a war," according to Gonzalez's affidavit.

Monserrate, as the story notes, categorically denies this. Pity. We need more of this in Twin Cities media. Just last week I said this self-same thing to the people who put out the Kingfield Neighborhood Newsletter.

You know about our expanded food content that debuts next month. Here's another, smaller scale new project: Nate Patrin and others are going to begin regularly reviewing video games for us. Nate's first crack at this -- which might result in a dedicated blog at some point after March -- is the latest in the Burnout series of racing games. It's an extensive, in-depth review with screenshots, and we're going to try to do more of these longer posts.

Another exciting new initiative is going to pop up in the next week, related to local arts. Stay tuned.